New Ulm weekly review., 1887-11-23
VL8H R Rlsstl 'LS
NEW ULM. MINI.
sCHAs. Z. RoOs, Managing Editor

CHAs. Z. ROOs, Managing Editor
Wednesday, November %, 1887.
We admire the daily press Of Amerl-
ca we admire its purity, its decency,
its patriotism and its enterprise But
despite this beundless admiration, we
must admit that among its members
there are few whose utterances now
and then scarcely fall short Of treason.
The Minneapolis Evening Journal. for
instance, has the audacity to print the
following:
s.The execution of the anarchists teach
es a lesson not only to those yearnlngg
and planning for the destruction Of So
ciety, but also to society itself. The
enemies of social order have learned
that liberty is not license, that law is
not less supreme in a republic than in
monarchy. Society is reminded that
while the law itself must be inexorable,
its execution must not be barbaric. The
form of executing capital punishment
in vogue in this country is a relic Of
barbsrism. The object OF the death
penalty is not to torture. the criminal,
much less to make it appear to the
spectators that he is tortured in dying.
The object is simply to take his life for
the protection Of society. The execu-
ton by hanging is most shocking and
revolving spectacle. Whether or not
the executed suffers intense and pro-
longed agonies Of death, it is impossible
to conceive that he does not. The exc
cution of capital punishment should
impress the public with nothing but the
majesty Of the law. AS it is, the pub.
lie is more impressed with horror at the
methods of the law than with its power.
The shocking nature of the crime is
forgotten in the revolving character of
the execution sympathy for the victim
of the murderer is to some extent trans
ferred to the murderer himself. Time
may have been when hanging was
proper form of taking a criminals life.
If so, that time is passed. Hanging no
longer serves, but on the contrary
works to defeat, the ultimate object of
punishment. A far better method may
be devised by the use OF electricity. In
that event death, of course, would be
instantaneous. There would be no re-
voting scenes. no horrible writings of
the criminals body. no struggling for
life that will ever awaken horror and
sympathy. The hangman must go.
Electricity should take his place y
The above plea in favor of the aboli-
tion of an institution which constitutes
the very bulwark of our liberty. is as
infamous as it is un-American. AS a
native American we protest against any
such innovation which would destroy
one of the noblest outcomes of our
civilization and MAIN the educational
usefulness of our cherished idol, the
daily press.
It is by means of the gallows that our
civilization, in it's humane aspects, has
gained a distinction which, among the
civilized nations of the globe, renders
it second to none, with the possible ex-
ception of that of the Russians. It is
by means of the gallows that we have
been enabled to destroy a personifed
theory which had for its purpose the
abolition of government. We have
hanged anarchy. Such a thing would
have been impossible in despotic Ger
many. Under the laws of the German
Empire, those anarchists could only
have been sentenced to imprisonment
for number of years they could not
have been tried in bulk, so to speak,
and several of them might have been
acquitted because under law which
is evidently an outcome Of despotism,
verbal utterances do not render one an
accomplice before the fact unless it can
be proven that he has received or given
remuneration. Such a deplorable condi-
ton of affairs is plainly due to Ignorance
of the art of hanging. The capital pun
ishment inflicted in that despotic coun-
try is decapitation; and as this process
requires considerable skill and it is ex-
ceedingly difficult to find a person who
will submit to the contempt in which
one who takes human life even in pur-
suance Of a legal warrant is held BY
that tyrannized people, they have but
one executioner. The entire penal code
y Is so arranoed that this offic Is seldom